Platz Verein Spiele Punkte 12 1. FC Nürnberg 10 10 16 Hannover 96 11 9. A number of the team's players and officials were accused of accepting bribes as part of the widespread Bundesliga scandal of Investigation showed that Schalke had deliberately played to lose their 17 May, 28th-round match against Arminia Bielefeld , 0—1.

As a result, several Schalke players were banned for life, including three — Klaus Fischer , "Stan" Libuda and Klaus Fichtel — who regularly played for the West Germany national team at the time.

Even though the penalties were later commuted to bans ranging from six months to two years, the scandal had a profound effect on what might have possibly become one of the dominant German teams of the s.

In the wake of the scandal, the club's performance was uneven. They managed another second-place result in —77 , finishing just one point behind champions Borussia Mönchengladbach.

In the early s, Die Knappen ran into trouble and found themselves relegated to the second division of the Bundesliga for the —82 season and, after promotion, again in — They returned to the top flight in but slipped once more to the second tier in They returned to the Bundesliga in the —92 season and have stayed in the top flight ever since.

Coached by the Dutch coach Huub Stevens , the Schalke squad earned the nickname "Euro Fighters", which is still in use among fans. Stevens, who was widely unknown in Germany at the time, quickly earned himself a cult following among the Schalke supporters.

Stevens successfully implemented a system of rigid discipline, especially in the defence. The turn of the millennium has seen much stronger performances from Schalke.

During the s and early , the club underwent a successful transformation into a modern, commercial sports organization and established itself as one of the dominant teams of the Bundesliga.

Schalke captured consecutive DFB-Pokals in —01 and —02 , and earned second-place finishes in the Bundesliga in —01 , —05 and — The —01 season finish was heartbreaking for Schalke's supporters as it took a goal in the fourth minute of injury time by Bayern Munich away to Hamburger SV to snatch the title from Die Königsblauen.

The last few years have been more successful for Schalke, who finished in the second place in , a result that led to Schalke making its second appearance in the UEFA Champions League.

There, Schalke finished in third place during the group stage and continuing into the UEFA Cup , where they were eliminated by the eventual winners Sevilla in the semi-finals.

In —06 , Schalke finished in fourth place in the Bundesliga and a year later they again finished as runners-up for the third time in seven seasons.

In the —08 season , Schalke progressed past the Champions League group stage for the first time and advanced to the quarter-finals after defeating Porto on penalties in the round of They were eliminated by Barcelona in the quarter-finals, losing both home and away matches 0—1.

On 9 October , Russian oil company Gazprom became the club's new sponsor. On 13 April , the club announced the dismissal of manager Mirko Slomka after a heavy defeat at the hands of Werder Bremen and elimination from the Champions League.

Former players Mike Büskens and Youri Mulder were put in charge of the first team on an interim basis. For the —09 Bundesliga season , Schalke signed a new head coach, Fred Rutten , previously of Twente.

Rutten signed a contract running until June On 1 July , Felix Magath , who had led VfL Wolfsburg to the top of the table in the Bundesliga, became head coach and general manager of the Königsblauen.

Magath's tenure at the club was initially successful, seeing the side score a glut of goals in the first few months of the season, though defensive frailties and Magath's questionable squad selection had made him unpopular with Schalke supporters by December On 16 March , Magath was sacked and replaced with Ralf Rangnick , who previously, between and , had a brief spell being in charge of the team.

Within just weeks of his appointment, Rangnick masterminded a 5—2 victory over Inter Milan at the San Siro during the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

Schalke advanced to the semi-final where they lost 2—0 to Manchester United in the first leg and 4—1 in the second leg.

On 22 September , Ralf Rangnick announced his immediate resignation as head coach of Schalke 04 due to long-term exhaustion.

Stevens' contract was to run until 30 June Despite having legendary status among Schalke supporters, Stevens' return to Schalke was met with some scepticism as fans feared that Stevens, who coached Schalke to the UEFA Cup win with a rigidly defensive system, could abandon Rangnick's system of attacking play in favour of returning to his defensive antics.

Although Schalke played a somewhat inconsistent season, they reached third place in the Bundesliga and therefore direct qualification for the UEFA Champions League.

Schalke had an excellent start to the —13 Bundesliga season , and worked their way to second place in the league by November, just behind Bayern Munich.

On 20 October, Schalke traveled to Borussia Dortmund for matchday 8, and were able to defeat the home side 2—1 to secure their first league Revierderby win since February while securing a Champions League place by finishing in fourth place.

Schalke ultimately finished the group stage in second place, behind Chelsea, and was eliminated in the round of 16 by Real Madrid.

It also led to performance related discussions about head coach Jens Keller. Partially, Schalke fielded up to ten young players with potential who played in the Schalke youth system throughout the season.

Among the brightest young player discoveries of the —14 season were Max Meyer and Leon Goretzka. The young Schalke squad won 11 out of 17 matches, totalling 36 points.

At the end of the —14 season, the club finished in third place in the Bundesliga table to qualify for their third-straight UEFA Champions League appearance, a feat Schalke had never before achieved.

On 7 October , after a 1—2 defeat to Hoffenheim and after amassing just eight points from seven matches, Keller was sacked and succeeded by Roberto Di Matteo.

Hospitality services and restaurants at the S04 Veltins-Arena. Ice hockey events are hosted at the S04 Veltins-Arena.

Biathlon and a variety of winter sport events are hosted at the S04 Veltins-Arena. The headline sponsors of Schalke 04 are the China-based electronics manufacturer Hisense and the Russia-based hydrocarbon giant Gazprom.

Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

In the year , the supporters voted for Schalker Jahrhundertelf , the "Team of the Century": Schalke's stadium, known as the Veltins-Arena under a sponsorship agreement with Veltins brewery, was completed in the summer of and has a capacity of 62, spectators.

The facility was previously known as the Arena AufSchalke and replaced the Parkstadion capacity of 62, built in Prior to this, the club had played its matches in the Glückauf-Kampfbahn , constructed in with a capacity of 35, The facility was used for amateur matches during its latter years with a reduced capacity of just 5, The number of members of Schalke 04 grew from 10, in to , in This figure makes Schalke 04 the second-biggest sports club in Germany and fourth-biggest sports club in the world, behind Bayern Munich, Sporting Lisbon and first-placed Benfica.

Schalke 04 has the fourth-largest fan-base of any team in the world. Apart from Gelsenkirchen 10, members and its immediate neighboring towns, the members of Schalke 04 also come from more distant cities such as Cologne 1, , Berlin and Dortmund The fan-base of Schalke is connected, in a friendly way, with the supporters of 1.

FC Nürnberg and Dutch club Twente. The friendship with Nürnberg is the oldest connection between two fan-bases in Germany. Before a match between both clubs, the official club songs are played.

Popular unofficial chants are. The Revierderby is the rivalry between local clubs Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund , both situated in the densely populated Ruhr region.

This league saw Schalke's most successful decade in their history: The club never lost a home match in the Gauliga Westfalen in all these 11 seasons and only lost six away matches, while remaining unbeaten in the —36, —37, —38, —39, —41 and —43 seasons, a sign of the club's dominance.

Schalke's first national title came in with a 2—1 victory over favourites 1. The next year , they successfully defended their title against VfB Stuttgart with a 6—4 win.

The club missed the final, but would make appearances in the championship match in each of the next six years, coming away victorious in , , and Die Königsblauen also made frequent appearances in the final of the Tschammerpokal, but enjoyed much less success there.

They lost the inaugural Tschammerpokal 0—2 to 1. FC Nürnberg in They also made failed appearances in the , , and finals with their only victory coming in against Fortuna Düsseldorf.

Over a dozen seasons, from to , Schalke won of Gauliga matches, drawing 21 and losing only 6. Within this period, they scored goals and conceded just From to , they did not lose a single league match.

The club's dominance throughout this period led them to be held up for propaganda purposes by the Nazi regime as an example of "new Germany".

They resumed regular play following the war and, for a time, continued to compete as a strong side. They set a record in a national championship round match with a 20—0 drubbing of SpVgg Herten , but that spoke more to the weakened condition of German football than the ability of the team.

Schalke's play fell off and the best they could manage in the new Oberliga West in was a sixth-place finish.

Within two years, they slipped to 12th place. It would take Schalke until the mids to recover their form.

They finished third in a tight three-way race for the Oberliga West title, decided on the last day of the season. The club's next, and to date last, German championship came in with a 3—0 victory over Hamburger SV.

The strong fanbase of the club is as well documented in a local church, St. It was renovated shortly after the victory, where one of the glass windows shows Aloysius Gonzaga with a football and the dress and colors of Schalke.

Schalke continued to play well, delivering a number of top four finishes in the years leading up to the formation of the Bundesliga , West Germany's new federal, professional league.

Those results earned them selection as 1 of 16 clubs admitted to the top-flight league. Their first years in the Bundesliga were difficult.

In —65 , they escaped relegation only through the expansion of the league to 18 teams. A number of finishes at the lower end of the league table followed, before a marked improvement in —72 , culminating in a second-place finish to Bayern Munich and after having led the league for much of the season.

Despite their improved results, the seeds of a major reversal had already been sown. A number of the team's players and officials were accused of accepting bribes as part of the widespread Bundesliga scandal of Investigation showed that Schalke had deliberately played to lose their 17 May, 28th-round match against Arminia Bielefeld , 0—1.

As a result, several Schalke players were banned for life, including three — Klaus Fischer , "Stan" Libuda and Klaus Fichtel — who regularly played for the West Germany national team at the time.

Even though the penalties were later commuted to bans ranging from six months to two years, the scandal had a profound effect on what might have possibly become one of the dominant German teams of the s.

In the wake of the scandal, the club's performance was uneven. They managed another second-place result in —77 , finishing just one point behind champions Borussia Mönchengladbach.

In the early s, Die Knappen ran into trouble and found themselves relegated to the second division of the Bundesliga for the —82 season and, after promotion, again in — They returned to the top flight in but slipped once more to the second tier in They returned to the Bundesliga in the —92 season and have stayed in the top flight ever since.

Coached by the Dutch coach Huub Stevens , the Schalke squad earned the nickname "Euro Fighters", which is still in use among fans. Stevens, who was widely unknown in Germany at the time, quickly earned himself a cult following among the Schalke supporters.

Stevens successfully implemented a system of rigid discipline, especially in the defence. The turn of the millennium has seen much stronger performances from Schalke.

During the s and early , the club underwent a successful transformation into a modern, commercial sports organization and established itself as one of the dominant teams of the Bundesliga.

Schalke captured consecutive DFB-Pokals in —01 and —02 , and earned second-place finishes in the Bundesliga in —01 , —05 and — The —01 season finish was heartbreaking for Schalke's supporters as it took a goal in the fourth minute of injury time by Bayern Munich away to Hamburger SV to snatch the title from Die Königsblauen.

The last few years have been more successful for Schalke, who finished in the second place in , a result that led to Schalke making its second appearance in the UEFA Champions League.

There, Schalke finished in third place during the group stage and continuing into the UEFA Cup , where they were eliminated by the eventual winners Sevilla in the semi-finals.

In —06 , Schalke finished in fourth place in the Bundesliga and a year later they again finished as runners-up for the third time in seven seasons.

In the —08 season , Schalke progressed past the Champions League group stage for the first time and advanced to the quarter-finals after defeating Porto on penalties in the round of They were eliminated by Barcelona in the quarter-finals, losing both home and away matches 0—1.

On 9 October , Russian oil company Gazprom became the club's new sponsor. On 13 April , the club announced the dismissal of manager Mirko Slomka after a heavy defeat at the hands of Werder Bremen and elimination from the Champions League.

Former players Mike Büskens and Youri Mulder were put in charge of the first team on an interim basis. For the —09 Bundesliga season , Schalke signed a new head coach, Fred Rutten , previously of Twente.

Rutten signed a contract running until June On 1 July , Felix Magath , who had led VfL Wolfsburg to the top of the table in the Bundesliga, became head coach and general manager of the Königsblauen.

Magath's tenure at the club was initially successful, seeing the side score a glut of goals in the first few months of the season, though defensive frailties and Magath's questionable squad selection had made him unpopular with Schalke supporters by December On 16 March , Magath was sacked and replaced with Ralf Rangnick , who previously, between and , had a brief spell being in charge of the team.

Within just weeks of his appointment, Rangnick masterminded a 5—2 victory over Inter Milan at the San Siro during the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

Schalke advanced to the semi-final where they lost 2—0 to Manchester United in the first leg and 4—1 in the second leg.

On 22 September , Ralf Rangnick announced his immediate resignation as head coach of Schalke 04 due to long-term exhaustion.

Stevens' contract was to run until 30 June Despite having legendary status among Schalke supporters, Stevens' return to Schalke was met with some scepticism as fans feared that Stevens, who coached Schalke to the UEFA Cup win with a rigidly defensive system, could abandon Rangnick's system of attacking play in favour of returning to his defensive antics.

Although Schalke played a somewhat inconsistent season, they reached third place in the Bundesliga and therefore direct qualification for the UEFA Champions League.

Schalke had an excellent start to the —13 Bundesliga season , and worked their way to second place in the league by November, just behind Bayern Munich.

On 20 October, Schalke traveled to Borussia Dortmund for matchday 8, and were able to defeat the home side 2—1 to secure their first league Revierderby win since February while securing a Champions League place by finishing in fourth place.